Snow Falcon

'Down there — up ahead.'

They were passing over thick fir forest now, in a narrower valley that looked very much like a pen, something into which he could be driven, and boxed. It would have to do. Steep sides to the valley, but no altitude. They passed over the spot in the trees, a tiny clearing, perhaps where timber had been cut for local use.

'What — ?' Vorontsyev began. The pilot shoved something into his hand. A small compass.

'You'll need it. Down we go!'

The helicopter stopped almost dead, as if it had struck solid air. Vorontsyev was jolted in his seat. Immediately, the two gunships on either side overshot, and the one following loomed over them.

The helicopter was shuffling in a curious crab-like motion, and descending rapidly, when the voice snapped in the headset: 'Maintain position!'

Vorontsyev flicked the switch so that his voice would be heard by the leader of the flight, and he barked, 'Get down, you bastard, or I'll kill you now!'

The pilot juggled the MIL level, and the trees slid past the windows as they dropped the last few feet. The clearing was only yards across, too small to accommodate themselves and one of the big gunships. The MIL bounced as the wheels touched, and in the same moment Vorontsyev slid the door open. He looked at the pilot, and saw the suspicion of death in his face.

'Sorry!' he said, and struck him across the temple with the Makarov he had drawn from the shoulder holster. The pilot slumped forward.

Vorontsyev jumped out of the door, his legs buckling as he hit the frozen ground. He ducked under the slowing rotor blades, and in ten paces he was under the cover of the trees. The noise from the gunships overhead was deafening, as if expressing the pilots' anger. The trees swayed in the down-draught.

He had only minutes. He took a compass bearing, turned on his heel, and began running deeper into the trees.

Khamovkhin was in a rage of impotence. There was no part of him any longer able to weigh his words, observe himself as if at some performance. He did not care that the duty-officer, Ozeroff again, heard him, or would repeat what he had heard to his companions. He could be a laughing-stock — in two days, he might be nothing at all, hardly a memory. Erased.

'I don't want excuses, Yuri — I want action! he raged into the transmitter. He had broken code transmissions during the first conversation with Andropov after his flight back from Helsinki — impatience had become a black animal clawing at his back while he waited for encode-and-decode in order to relieve his feelings.

'I can only offer you a hope, Feodor. Our opponents are close to panic — they have begun to kill, on the least premise. If — if, we can keep our heads, then we may have a chance.'

'That's politician's talk — just farting in the storm! You've got half a million people in your bloody service — what are they doing? Sitting on their backsides in the restaurants you provide for their comfort?'

'My men are doing their best, Feodor — my survival, their survival, depends upon success.'

'Work it out, man! We know who they might be — get rid of them all! If you hit hard enough, the ones we want are going to get hurt — '

'No! I won't do it — not until there is a stronger indication, a stronger proof. Besides, Moscow Garrison is not replying to our signals.'

'What? What did you say?' Khamovkhin felt his breath coming as from a distance, insufficient to fill his lungs, keep him alive.

'I said — at six this morning, Moscow Garrison appeared to cut off all contact with the Centre, with anyone. I've had people trying to ring up on all sorts of pretexts — without success. I had a helicopter overfly — and it's as still as the grave down there.' Andropov's voice seemed to be coming from a long way away, as if the signal was fading. Khamovkhin nipped the transmit switch.

'Then it's beginning — we're too late.'

'Not yet. Nothing happening yet, anyway. The date is the twenty-fourth, remember, Feodor? Someone must have to get through to them before then. This is only part of the operation. We have to find him.'

'Do it — do it!'

'We will — ' Andropov cut the connection suddenly, so that Khamovkhin thought at first the signal had been lost, then that it had been intercepted, then realised that Andropov was weary of his tantrum. He became aware of Ozeroff behind him, smelling faintly of aftershave, and of the clownish, terrified figure he had cut. And cursed himself.

'You'll see the Englishman and the American now, sir?' Ozeroff asked politely.

'When I've shaved!' Khamovkhin snapped.

Andropov opened the tall window, but did not step out on to the balcony. The early morning air chilled him in a moment, but he remained standing in its draught, feeling refreshed, as if the cold were cleaning his skin, cooling his face of emotion. He hated Khamovkhin, insofar as he was capable of that dark an emotion. A panic-stricken child, an imbecile, a coward. And he the adult, the whole weight of it thrown on him.

In two minutes, he was cold, and he shut the window with hands already slightly numb, and returned to his desk. He hovered, as if about to sit, and then chose to sit in one of the armchairs.

On, yes. Kill them all. Group of Soviet Forces North — Praporovich, and Dolohov. Kill them, and stop the invasion of Scandinavia — easy, if you could be sure of finding them out in the open, with their backs turned, easy targets. And you could be sure that that would be the end of it, that they were in sole command, and that whoever was behind the whole thing wouldn't be able to order the invasion anyway Or arrest the whole of the Politburo — but, just in case, the Central Committee too, the Secretariat. Only a few hundred, maybe a thousand arrests, just to be on the safe side.

And you were sure that Praporovich and Dolohov wouldn't go ahead anyway.

Find the leader, and stop it all As long as you could be certain that Moscow Garrison would not go it alone.

He wanted to use naked power. Yes, he understood, complied with, Feodor's reasoning that wasn't reason so much as panic of a threatened animal — because he was a threatened animal, just the same.

But he had to face — as Feodor was hiding from the fact in rage — had to face the brute, inescapable fact that naked power was insufficient. That there was no complete, satisfactory solution — no way of stopping it, dead. A tyranny — it was called that, his service, by the journalists from outside, by the malcontents, the dissidents, even by some of the thugs inside it — a tyranny was impotent, incapable of protecting itself.

A tyranny isn't enough — He wanted to laugh, except that, even now, he could not find himself an object of levity.

Khamovkhin had changed his clothing — shaved and washed, then a clean shirt, a tie, another suit; for a moment, in the bedroom still darkened by shutters and curtains, he had thought of changing his long underwear. But he could not bear the thought of so literal a nakedness, or the sight of the shivering old body in the long mirror. As he came into the high room, and saw the two intelligence agents waiting for him, near the huge fireplace, their faces lit more by the log fire than the lamps or the light from the distant window, he quailed as if he were an emperor without clothes.

Aubrey received the impression of a warlord in a grey suit; albeit one prey to doubts, and apparently unsure of himself. There was an impression, a patina, of confidence overlying a tangible lack of assurance. Buckholz saw a much simpler figure — the representatives of an alien system now to be habilitated; and a man to whom his President had given ultimata, and whose representative he was.

'Mr Aubrey — Mr Buckholz,' Khamovkhin said, waving them back to their seats beneath some unidentifiable armorial crest over the fireplace. There was no one else hi the great room; Khamovkhin spoke better English than most of his predecessors, and he would not have admitted lack of confidence by having a security man inside the door.

'Mr First Secretary, good of you to see us so promptly,' Aubrey murmured deferentially as Khamovkhin stood with his back to the fireplace, wanning himself. The crest above him — no, Aubrey reflected, there is nothing